The Ricardo Flores Magon Academy charter school can continue operating. Today, the Charter School Institute voted to extend the embattled school’s contract for five more years — with several stipulations. Among them: Find a new leader. The school’s founder and most recent principal, Marcos Martinez, resigned along with two others…
Teachers at Colorado’s largest online school are likely overworked and underpaid, according to an investigation by KUNC reporter Grace Hood. She found that most of the teachers at Colorado Virtual Academy make less than $35,000 per year — even middle school English instructors who, during the first semester last year,…
Marcos Martinez, the controversial founder of the Ricardo Flores Magon Academy and subject of our cover story “A Hard Line,” has resigned. So, too, have two other employees whom the school’s board of trustees asked to take a paid leave while they investigated complaints against them. The school is now…
Life Skills Center lost its appeal yesterday before the State Board of Education, which sided with Denver Public Schools’ decision to close the school. The last-chance high, which Westword profiled in 2007, will shut its doors after eight years of educating all who showed up on its doorstep, no matter…
Regis University in Denver is taking the lead on a program to teach online college courses in refugee camps in Malawi and Kenya, and in urban Syria. The four-year pilot project is called “Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins” and it aims to solve a stark problem: the dearth…
Last September, we told you about a movement to end school zero-tolerance policies enacted after the 1999 Columbine massacre. These efforts led to Senate Bill 46, which passed its first committee test last week. But its narrow margin of victory leaves sponsoring Senator Evie Hudak worried that some legislators see…
The Colorado Supreme Court ruling to allow people with concealed-carry permits to possess guns on University of Colorado campuses will necessitate a major philosophical shift among CU officials. Case in point: Just over two years ago, CU Boulder expanded its weapons ban to include Nerf guns…
Denver Public Schools is exploring whether to ask taxpayers to approve more moolah. The district has convened a giant committee of community members (72 of them!), including some familiar DPS faces, tasked with recommending whether DPS should — in the face of deep state funding cuts — ask voters in…
An outlet for radical and revolutionary expression for over thirty years, P&L Press will open its first public infoshop this week. Located in the Jefferson Park neighborhood near the space occupied by the Denver Anarchist Black Cross and P&L itself, the store will provide resources on anarchism, prisoners’ rights, indigenous…
The University of Denver has unveiled the logo for the first presidential debate, to be held at DU’s Magness Arena on October 3. The university also launched a website today dedicated to the debate, which includes a countdown ticker: 226 days to go. One thing it doesn’t include? Ticket information…
The turmoil continues at the Ricardo Flores Magon Academy charter school in Westminster, the subject of our recent cover story, “A Hard Line.” Facing two lawsuits and many more complaints, the school has now (at least temporarily) lost its leader, about whom many of the complaints were made. While principal…
Regan Benson isn’t afraid to speak her mind, and neither are her kids, including son Blake, who made news for sporting a “Nobama” banner during Michelle Obama’s visit to Dakota Ridge High School, and Bryce, who ex-guv candidate Tom Tancredo backed in a controversy over wearing a “Border Patrol” T-shirt…
Ethan Hemming, charter school whiz and former interim executive director of the Charter School Institute, is no longer interim. The institute’s board of directors has made him the official executive director and head of an organization in the process of righting itself after several things went wrong, as explained in…
More Colorado college students are taking remedial courses once they arrive on campus, according to a report released today. In the 2010-11 school year, 31.8 percent of recent high school graduates were placed into a remedial course, as opposed to 28.6 percent in 2009-10. The remediation rate for students over…
Is Marcos Martinez, principal at the Ricardo Flores Magon Academy and the subject of our recent feature “A Hard Line,” on his way out as head of the Westminster charter school? Westword just received word that Martinez, chess instructor Dominic Martinez and director of curriculum and instruction Gabriela Guzman are…
I’m three weeks an intern for Westword, and with each day, I’m made more aware of the strengths (and the pitfalls) of my journalism education at CU-Boulder. Nothing scares me more than joining my older brother in his misery caused by the mania surrounding this economic downturn. “Good luck finding…
What does a minter look like? Despite a recent Google search, we at the Latest Word are still unsure how to picture one. But we could find out soon, because minters are among the choices offered by the student government at CU Denver as a new mascot for the school’s…
Nancy Werkmeister, a former assistant principal at North High School involved with the problem-ridden credit recovery program, is now working at Montbello High School. Denver Public Schools spokesman Mike Vaughn says Werkmeister “has a part-time contract to help with scheduling to make sure students are matched with the right classes,…
Five years ago, teachers at the Emily Griffith Technical College Language Learning Center, which offers free English classes to refugees, recognized a problem: Even when refugees landed jobs, they had trouble holding onto them. “We noticed that they were lacking in American workplace skills,” says dean of instruction Slavica Park…
A group of parents associated with the Ricardo Flores Magon Academy is airing its concerns about the charter school, which was the subject of our recent feature story, “A Hard Line.” They’re circulating a petition to remove the school’s leader, Marcos Martinez, and have sent a list of concerns to…
The school children shall melt no more! Or if they do, they’ll do it later in the summer. The Denver Public School board of education has voted to push back the school start-date this coming fall, after a mid-August heat wave caused students to sweat and their parents to petition…
Denver’s graduation rate is on the rise. Statistics released today show that 56.1 percent of seniors graduated “on time” in the spring of 2011, as opposed to 51.8 percent in 2010. “On time” means they graduated four years after entering high school as freshmen. Meanwhile, the dropout rate stayed the…
